Introducing the Higher Education Technology Landscape 2017

This month, Eduventures is releasing an update to the Higher Education Technology Landscape report. First introduced in 2014, the landscape map is our attempt to make sense of the cacophony of nearly 600 products marketed to higher education. The 2017 edition of our landscape represents over two years of market research, including hundreds of interviews with institutional edtech buyers and product demonstrations.

Using terminology that is well understood by institutions of higher education to create plain English definitions for each segment, we designed our classification system to cut through vendor marketing and jargon to map features and capabilities to their appropriate spot on the map. We have classified vendors into four major categories that align to the learner lifecycle and span 40 discrete market segments. We have also narrowed our focus to look more closely at those market segments that directly impact teaching, learning, and student success.

Click on the image to download a high-resolution version of the Higher Education Tech Landscape.

Our goal is to not only create institutional awareness about the breadth of solutions that exist within each market segment, but help institutions understand macro trends affecting the selection and implementation of these solutions by their peers. In addition to the refinement of our taxonomy, this year’s report includes analysis of common themes appearing across all categories, such as the ubiquitous inclusion of analytics, the reliance on high-quality data sources, and the premium placed on student, faculty, and staff engagement.

When looking across the spectrum of technology providers, Eduventures has identified several significant trends:

• Many market segments are seeing increasing competition, either by new vendors entering the market or by greater activity from established vendors, expanding the breadth of their capabilities to span more than one segment.
• Some segments have seen increased institutional requests for Eduventures research and advisory services, which suggests that those segments have more complex vendor selection processes.
• Certain segments are seeing substantial corporate activities, such as mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations.
• We see opportunities for the technology transfer of solutions proven in other industries into higher education.
• There are rising tensions between enabling faculty to choose solutions that meet the needs of their students and an institutional push for mandatory enterprise technology adoption.

We recognize that this is a dynamic industry that continues to mature, converge, and evolve, which will make this market map obsolete the day we publish it. That is why we are pursuing additional methods to get our vendor profiles and market segmentation in the hands of our clients more frequently—we look forward to sharing more information about this exciting new service later this year. For more information on this topic, we encourage you to read the report to be published this Thursday, the Higher Education Technology Landscape Report, 2017. If you’d like to receive the report, please contact clientresearch@eduventures.com.

We recognize that any product implementation requires a variety of professional services, training, and support to be successful.  A true higher education solution requires a smart combination of products and services.  Our next article will introduce Eduventures’ EdTech Services Maturity Model, which is our attempt to provide insight on the types of services that vendors provide mapped to the levels of adoption that vendor has in their particular market segment.